Lamar Smith’s plan to require employers to use E-Verify system faces criticism from anti-government conservatives

Lamar Smith has proposed legislation that would mandate the use of E-Verify, a citizenship verification database, for businesses within six months to three years.

Rep. Lamar Smith has proposed legislation that would require all employers to check the immigration status of new hires – but what he paints as common sense legislation has met with strife from some on the right.

“Congress tends to want to sprinkle technology onto economic and social problems and think that that will make them go away," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Conservatives gathered for a dial-in conference yesterday said Smith's proposal would lead to a more intrusive federal government and would not solve the underlying problem of a broken immigration system. Harper said that the E-Verify program Smith's legislation would mandate might lead to better and more intricate attempts at identity fraud.

But Smith, R-San Antonio, who introduced the bill to the House June 14, says the legislation could help to employ Americans, since the program would prevent undocumented workers, 7 million of whom currently work in the United States, from obtaining jobs.

“There is no other legislation that can be enacted that will create more jobs for American workers,” Smith said in a press release.

E-Verify allows employers to use Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security databases to check new employee’s names and Social Security numbers after when they fill out I-9 forms. The program is 99.5 percent accurate, according the Center for Immigration Studies.

Smith’s legislation, the Legal Workforce Act, would require large companies to begin using the system within six months, small companies within the year and agricultural businesses within the next three years.

“Rather than address a particular problem… what they decide to do is set up a very, very expensive national database and require all employers, employees, and potential employees to register with the government,” said former Bob Barr, a former Republican representative from Georgia.

Barr and other speakers said the new system could cause workers to seek under-the-table positions, meaning that the federal government would lose their payroll tax revenue. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2008 that this could cost up to $17.3 billion over a ten-year period, plus implementation costs.

“The core GOP values are supposed to be about free markets and limited government,” said Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst with Competitive Enterprise, a non-profit public policy organization focused on free enterprise and limited government that sponsored the call-in briefing.

“Regulations are really a great, violent predator in American businesses,” he said.
In a press release June 13 by Smith and Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-California, the chairman of the subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement, the lawmakers pointed out that even though the program is mostly voluntary, more than 250,000 employers currently use it, and an average of 1,300 new businesses sign up each week.

Despite the controversy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, National Association of Home Builders and Associated Builders and Contractors join other groups in supporting the bill.

By contrast, agricultural lobbies strongly oppose the measure, saying it will cripple their workforce.

“It’s still an eventual death knell in terms of what workers they will have available,” said Stuart Anderson, the executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy.